Information Builders

Information Builders creates the software of the corporate level in the field of integration of systems and Business Intelligence, solutions of the company are used in more than 12,000 organizations. Customers of Information Builders is most the organizations of the list of Fortune 100, most the federal state agencies of the USA.

Speaking about this company with the headquarters in New York, it is important to remember that it from the moment of the education in 1975 and until now remains private; this circumstance defines the strategy of behavior of the company in the market and in relation to the products. The private company has an opportunity to focus on product quality and on a customer support, but not current profits of shareholders; such companies do not grow "by leaps and bounds" as many startups, but save stability decades.

35 years ago Gerald Coen, Peter Mittelman and Martin Slagovich created Information Builders and still are in its management. A surprising example of longevity — and this with the fact that all business of the company is concentrated on only two related products — FOCUS and WebFOCUS. Only in 2001 the iWay Software subsidiary company focused on data integration and service - the focused architecture was created. Ten years ago at the celebration of 25-year anniversary of the company Coen told: "The reason of our longevity in our commitment for clients and in our capability to help them to pass through all changes of paradigms, from mainframes to the PC, from the PC to the client-server architectures and further to the Internet". What occurred in the next ten years was exact confirmation of the provided expression.

Product line

Information Builders is engaged in development of the WebFocus platform, most strength of which, according to Garter, reports are. Also this platform is often selected for its opportunity to be integrated into the existing information infrastructure (databases, the middleware) that selects WebFocus against the background of offers of other vendors. Strength of the solution is also deep functionality in the field of management of data.

WebFocus is closely integrated with the integration Information Builders platform under the name iWay which allows to connect various data sources to the platform, to use geocoding, search in real time, MDM and many other things. This circumstance does WebFocus by the suitable solution for the organizations which have no data warehouse and also for the operational reporting.

Excellent opportunities for a mashstabirovaniye are often used for creation of analytical web applications based on WebFocus. 46% of users noted that they use WebFocus for creation of external applications, and it is one of the main competitive advantages of the platform. Instead of creating the cloud solution, WebFocus involves a great number of tretyestoronny independent suppliers of software who create based on the platform own SaaS of the offer.

68% of users of WebFocus do not note in general any problems when using the platform that Information Builders in top-3 among world vendors of BI platforms, according to Gartner displays. Also Information Builders actively works on development of the platform, creating vertical solutions, having issued the solution for medium and small business of WebFocus Express recently. Partnership with Teradata allowed the company to oppose a joint predozheniye to the machines IBM iSeries.

History

2020: Tibco Software purchased Information Builders for $1 billion

On October 22, 2020 the company on software development for data integration of Tibco Software announced purchase of the competing Information Builders company.

Tibco Software did not open the amount for which purchased Information Builders, but the Reuters agency with reference to an unnamed source reported that the cost of sale of the company is estimated approximately at $1 billion according to Tibco company, after completion of the transaction this acquisition will become the largest in its history.

Activity of Information Builders started in 1975, its main product is the WebFocus platform which provides tools for data visualization and creation of reports and also for the distributed, built-in and expanded analytics.

The software developer for integration of Information Builders is sold for $1 billion

With Information Builders acquisition we get access to broader set of analytics and technologies, considerably increasing our capability to help the leading world organizations with the solution of their most complex problems with data, - the CEO of Tibco Dan Stritman said in the statement. The combination of two of our companies to strong and complementary opportunities will even more realize the potential of faster and reasonable solutions given in real time for acceptance.

Throughout long time Information Builders was in a private property of its founder and chairman Gerald Coen who resigned as the CEO only in January, 2019.

We founded Information Builders for the purpose of creation of a new product for a business intelligence which will allow nonprogrammers to create proprietary applications for creation of reports, said in Coen's statement. We are proud of what the company reached for more than four decades of innovations, and for us a great honor to combine efforts with the company which cares for the clients also strongly, as well as we. I look forward to very bright future for our solutions, our command and especially our clients.

Tibco stated that it hopes to close the deal on purchase by the first quarter 2021.^[1]

2013: Information Builders became more active in Europe

In February, 2013 vendor analytical and BI of the Information Builders systems opened the European headquarters in Amsterdam, the Netherlands. According to the company, emergence of local office will allow vendor to give support to users in this region by means of interaction with divisions in the different countries.

Dennis Bartels as the vice president of the company headed the European headquarters of the American vendor. Bartels works in the company 12 years and has profound knowledge of products and also representations of how to increase presence of Information Builders in the region. It will be accountable to David Small to the vice president for international sales.

In the headquarters in Amsterdam also other team members will work. In particular, Roland Kinket, the head of service division of the company in EMEA and also Anoma van Eeden, the director of international marketing.

According to the statement of Information Builders, Europe is key area for expansion at the moment so opening of head office will allow to strengthen relationship with the existing clients, partners and suppliers here. "Europe is the significant market for us, absolutely definitely we will be focused on growth in this region. Our clients asked us about providing more centralized support in Europe, and now we will be able to give them such opportunity", - Smoll commented.

According to a magic square Gartner for 2011, leaders of a segment of BI platforms in were Oracle MicroStrategy Microsoft QlikTech, Information Builders IBM, SAS and SAP. Solutions of the company are used in more than 12 thousand organizations.

As for the Russian market, earlier a system in Russia was represented exclusively by Phobos Plus company, but then it was deprived of the partner status Informatian Builders and stopped development of this direction. In November, 2010 Informatian Builders announced entry into the Russian and Ukrainian markets with the assistance of Sybase CIS. Afterwards Sybase was purchased by SAP.

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